Meltdown/Spectre Attacks

eSentire is aware of recently disclosed vulnerabilities in many modern processors. Speculative execution side-channel attacks (known as Meltdown and Spectre), could allow attackers to access information stored in protected memory for processes and operating systems. This can include passwords, key strokes, encryption keys and other sensitive data. eSentire has not observed mass-scale exploitation at this time.

The vulnerability is primarily caused by CPU design choices, and CERT [1] is recommending that affected hardware [2] ultimately be replaced to fully remove the underlying vulnerability.

Operating system and software vendors have released updates which mitigate these vulnerabilities. Affected parties are highly encouraged to review and apply updates for relevant CVEs (listed below) on affected systems, and monitor vendor communication for updates as they are made available.

What we’re doing about it

eSentire Threat Intelligence will continue to monitor the situation for future releases and updates.

What you should do about it

Review and deploy the following recommended OS and software vendor updates:

CVE-2017-5754 (Meltdown) affects Intel x86-64 processors, and is easier to exploit than Spectre. Vendor updates are primarily targeting this CVE.

eSentire has not observed any attacks at this time and additionally, no major vendor has indicated that attacks have been observed at this time.

Although CERT recommends replacing affected CPU hardware, this likely not feasible for most organizations. We recommend following guidance from OS and software vendors to apply updates on impacted systems in order to mitigate these vulnerabilities in a timely manner.